作者：施惠淳 Shield, Bernard J. 年份：1977
A HONG KONG VIEW
On the 6th February of this year Radio TV Hong Kong broadcast a programme on Christian Unity. The programme, which was chaired by Fr. Ciaran Kane, S.J., brought together Dr. Paul Clasper, an American Episcopalian, and Fr. Bernard J. Shields, S.J., a Roman Catholic. They discussed the important new ecumenical agreement on "Authority in the Church", published in London and Rome in January. The text was published in the London Catholic weekly The Tablet on 22nd January, and as a pamphlet by the Catholic Truth Society and the SPCK jointly in London.
The following is a transcript of the Hong Kong broadcast. The original spoken style has been slightly tightened up in a few places.
Kane: During the recent Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an agreed document on Authority in the Church was published by the Anglican-Roman Catholic international commission which has been studying the topic in their search for common ground between the two Communions. With Dr. Paul Clasper, who teaches Theology and World Religions at the Chinese University, and Fr. Joe Shields, who teaches New Testament at the Holy Spirit Seminary Aberdeen, I talked about the significance of the document.
Clasper: Well, I think this is a very significant document in the life and discussion of the Church. It's like the great, big issue that's been lurking behind the scenes for along, long time in ecumenical discussions now comes right into the middle, and there's a chance to face and discuss what many have believed to be one of the thorniest of all problems, but it looks like we have rather amazing consensus, at least ground to begin to discuss on. So I think this is quite a significant document.
Kane: One of the comments on it was that it was perhaps one of the big events of Christian history this century. Do you think that's exaggerated, Joe?
Shields: Well, I wouldn't quite put it that way myself, not immediately anyway, until I see the reaction of the two Churches involved. I would agree with Paul, certainly, that it's significant, very significant and very important, and from a theological point of view I think it's a very fine synthesis of what we hold on both sides as regards this matter of authority in the Church. I think it's very comprehensive too, e.g. those who possess authority, it goes through these, one by one, beginning obviously with Christ who possesses authority in a unique way, as being the Son of God, also the Scriptures, the Word of God, and then the various human what-you-might-call "Depositories" of authority: the faithful, ordained ministers, bishops, patriarches and primates, Councils and the Bishop of Rome.
Kane: Some of the newspapers took it up very much as kind of a Pope for the Anglican Church. Is this a fair comment, Paul?
Clasper: I think maybe for the average reader or the casual person, that doctrinal agreements reached by a theological commission cannot by themselves achieve the goal of unity. In other words, this hasn't settled anything by any means. What it has done is raise the question for discussion. And so the document concludes that "we submit our Statesments to the respective authorities to consider whether or not" we have expressed the common mind "on these central subjects", and whether or not there is some action that is now called for, if we have expressed the kind of consensus of unity. So in many ways this is really a statement to further discussions at a very significant level. So some of those headlines in the paper sound like it's already wrapped up and nothing more to be said or done about it, and I think that would be wrong.
Kane: One of the English comments that I saw was that because the Anglican Church is more democratic and less hierarchically ruled, that the voice of the people, so to speak, will live much more say in whether this in fact is accepted or not.
Clasper: It's hard to know who speaks for Anglicans─maybe it's hard to know who speaks for Roman Catholics these days too ─. But the broad spectrum in the Anglican Communion of course includes some on the one hand who are almost fundamentalist type of Christians, who on the whole have great resistance to matters Roman Catholic and these are a large number of people and very vocal. And the pendulum swings to the other side, to many who are Catholics of a kind who almost "out-Catholic" many of the Roman Catholics, and they of course welcome it with open arms. But in between "in the misty flats the rest of us go to and fro". And it will take a lot of discussion and sifting and shaking down by this broad spectrum of Anglicans, and that's why it's difficult to say what the Anglican reaction is or will be.
Actually the Anglican Communion has been going through lots of stresses and strains these days: ordination of women has been a big question and many other – the new liturgies have all been discussed. So we are a Communion in ferment, and it would be a little hard to predict how we are going to come out on this one.
Kane: You have done a certain amount of research, Joe, on some of the things that have been appearing recently. What kind of reactions have you picked up in newspaper comments and letters?
Shields: Well, a variety really, many of them very positive. I would say the newspapers, the news agency reports and so on are very positive about it, that it is quite a remarkable document. I have seen some of the correspondence that's appeared in the London Times and that has been a bit more negative, I must say. One point in particular I might mention: there have been some letters from the Free Church people in England, say Methodists and so on, and they seem to be a bit worried about it. I suppose it's the sort of permanent dilemma that the Church of England has had, namely which way to go, towards the Roman Catholic position or towards the more Reformed position, and some of these Free Church people feel that this move now certainly is in the direction of Rome, and therefore it's taking the Anglicans away from them, so to speak, and so they are a bit unhappy about it, I can see.
But another thing I'd like to mention is this that I think we wantto see this particular document in context, namely that it is part of a dialogue that has been going on between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church for, I think, eleven years now, dating from the time when Archbishop Ramsay of Canterbury visited the Pope in 1966. And one of the things they agreed to do─it was an extremely cordial, friendly meeting and one of the things they decided to do was to set up an international commission of theologians from the two sides, Anglican and Roman Catholic, and to examine the areas of disunity between the two Churches and see what could be done about them. And they talked about "unity by stages", that bit by bit, step by step, we'd try to come together. And as a result of that there was a meeting held in Malta of a preparatory commission and they mapped out the area, and then in 1971 the first of these three Common Statements appeared, the so-called Windsor Statement on the Eucharist. Two years later in 1973 you had the Canterbury Statement on the Ministry. And now, just about two weeks ago, we have this Venice Statement on Authority. It was completed last Summer, I believe, but it's just now been published. Therefore we have to see this as part of an ongoing dialogue. It's not finished by any means at this point. These three documents in fact will be revised by he commission and they'll be combined into one document and then submitted to the authorities on both sides.
But as Paul has made quite clear, I think, the reaction of the ordinary faithful is extremely important, on both sides again. How are they going to react? Will they find their faith represented in this document? And then also what about the leaders of the Churches, are they going to accept as well. At the moment it's an open question. The document is published for discussion and reactions.
Clasper: When we speak, Joe, of the common people in both Communions discussing, does it seem like the Anglicans have the most to face up to and maybe risk, while the Roman Catholic laypeople don't have quite as much to risk, they've it all going their way? Or how does it look that way?
Shields: It's difficult to answer that really. Again I think the ordinary Catholic faithful will have a lot of different reactions to this, I imagine. It'll depend for one thing on what part of the world they live in. To me this is all a very English-speaking problem. There are, as we all know, the old wounds and the old history of 400 years and I'm afraid a lot of these have sort of got into the common imagination and it's so difficult to dispel them. This is going to be a very slow, tedious problem. You can have agreement among theologians, on an academic level or a theological level, but how much of this really reaches the ordinary people and will be acceptable to them?─I think this is perhaps the key question.
Clasper: I liked the spirit of the document when it said we have tried "to get behind the opposed and entrenched positions of past controversies". One of the tests will be whether we can, as non-Roman Catholics for instance appreciate the ferment and the changes that have come in Roman Catholicism and face the kind of things that you people are saying today, and whether we can face some of the issues that have divided us, at a fresh stage of discussions and not simply polarize on the basis of past polemics.(Music . . .)
Kane: Dr. Paul Clasper with Fr. Joe Shields discussing the Anglican-Roman Catholic Statement on Authority in the Church.
This has been "Sunday"